1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of information processing and more particularly relates to a method and apparatus for automated referencing of electronic information.
2. Description of the Background
Electronic messaging has become an important part of business, governmental, educational and personal communication. Users on remote computers may communicate with each other by exchanging electronic mail (e-mail). Most e-mail messages are sent in plain text format called American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). ASCII standardizes the information an e-mail program needs in order to send the basic alphabet, punctuation and certain additional characters. The data of an e-mail message is easier to send and receive when there is no format information, such as fonts, colors, italics, and tables. Most e-mail systems can handle plain text transfer without difficulties.
For users who want to send documents, spread sheets, graphic images, sound files, executable programs or other non-text data formats, they must overcome the text only character format limitations of ASCII. Typically, users attempt to accomplish this by sending the formatted documents as attachments to e-mail messages rather than placing the data within the body of the message. When a user attaches a file to an e-mail message, an encoding scheme in the user's e-mail program converts the file to ASCII format When the e-mail arrives at its destination, the recipient's e-mail package converts the attachment back into its original format.
Sharing attachments across different e-mail platforms is problematic. For example, problems arise when a recipient is sent an attached file for a software package he does not have, compressed in a format that cannot be decompressed, or encoded in a way that cannot be decoded. Also, not every Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) gateway can reliably handle multiple or large attachments. Different mail systems may have various character limits for the body of the text, which may cause the loss of attachment if it is too large. Similarly, the sending of more than one attached file may result in the loss of one or all of the attachments. Further, the encoding and decoding processes used in transferring the message may mangle or truncate the attachment. Or, the message may remain encoded in the body of the text, making it unreadable unless decoded manually. In sum, different platforms, e-mail programs, gateways and encoding methods make the sending of e-mail attachments a questionable and unpredictable means of electronic communication.
Such difficulties in the transfer of attachments may extend beyond the single e-mail message sent. Indeed, the operability of the entire e-mail system may be affected. For example, one unreadable attachment may cause a recipient's e-mail application to crash.
In addition to sharing information via attachments, information is also shared through access to corporate intranets and the Internet. Typically, a user "pulls" information, often complete Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages, to a Web browser from an external Web server or an intranet. This pulling of information expends a great amount of network bandwidth and requires the user to engage in time-consuming and time-wasting searches for information. Alternatively, "push"-oriented or broadcast technology may be used. Under push technology, a central location on a server gathers information, matches it to a user's needs and automatically sends it to the user as desired or needed. Push technology suffers from many shortcomings, including overloading networks by pushing too much data at peak times, causing network shutdowns due to unsuitable network configurations, transmitting a limited amount of information because of insufficient management tools and causing information overload.
Therefore, a need has arisen for a new method and apparatus for automated referencing of electronic information that overcomes the disadvantages and deficiencies over the prior art.